Need This? Three Thousand Dollar Accordion

Masters of musical machinery Roland must have either been dared or lost a bet to build the FR-2: V-Accordion .

This accordion contains the latest in Physical Behavior Modelling, percussion backup and MIDI support. Which is nice, but doesn't change the fact it's an accordion. That's like using surgical steel to make a perfect medical-grade leech carrying case. If you've enjoyed the polka sound of an accordion within the last ten years then I hate to break it to you, but you probably won't live long enough to get your hands on this device. What with being so incredibly old, and all.

The system includes a Bellows Resistance Regulator, which is the most insane combination of brand-new technology and obsolescence I've seen since the transistorised steam engine. This whole machine is like nanotech protein folding to engineer a perfect pointed stick. The one useful upgrade is a headphone socket, allowing the few demented accordion fans still running around loose to accord to their hearts content without bothering the normal people.

It claims that its lightweight design is perfect for young students or travelling performers, apparently unaware that

a)Making a kid learn accordion now qualifies as child abuse in most first world countries

b) If a traveling accordion player could afford three thousand dollars, they wouldn't be a traveling accordion player.

If you feel like committing a war crime you can even hook it up to a speaker system to project your accordionation around the neighbourhood, though there have to be less painful ways to commit suicide. The accordion has historically (and accurately) been described as "the instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin", so hooking it up to an amplifier makes it a weapon of mass destruction. Don't.

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$3,000 is kinda cheap for a good accordion (even a "fake" one like this one; which is Roland's low-end). With more parts than a grand piano, a Russian/Italian concert "bayan" accordion can cost $50,000. (People pay for those on what they make as professional accordionists, remember.) I won't say that's not crazy, but it's on a different level than most cheap mass produced instruments.

It's only in Anglo North America that the accordion faded in popularity (since the early '60's). Pretty much everywhere else it's just another instrument, and they don't get "accordion jokes" at all. I find that interesting, and your tone a tad lazy, relying on 30-year-old humor (and bad personal experience?).

Whatever – the squeezebox is in resurgence. So luckily we'll get to hear more and more of it!

First of all, I hope I will live long enough, as I'm only in my 40's and have played accordion since I was 11.

Why is it acceptable to stereotype like this? Try that routine on watermelons or fried chicken. "If you've enjoyed fried chicken, you must be black".
That's as true as the comment you made on polkas. While many blacks like fried chicken, if I say that, I'm a racist... Yet, because a lot of older folks like polkas (as well as ALL ages), it's ok to make a statement like that without repercussions.
Seriously, we see constant jabs at anything with European roots, yet Hispanics, Blacks, Arabs, Orientals are all off limits.

I've seen stupid anti-polka jokes since I was a kid, and yet as a musician managed to play them at 1000's of paying gigs across this country to appreciative audiences. (while my rock & roll buddies never got their band out of the garage).

I think it's time the anti-polka movement got silenced, just like the aforementioned stereotypical jabs!

Actually, the accordion is gaining in popularity. It has appeared on recordings by k.d. lang, Billy Joel, Bruce Hornsby and Bruce Springsteen, among countless others. Sure, you can play polkas on an accordion. But you can also play all other types of music. Can you only play classical music on a piano? Only marching band music on a trumpet? For an inventor, you sure seem to have a closed mindset.